#40 One cold call a day keeps habit away

#42 Eat that frog couple has now ended. It was valuable enough that I intend to continue doing it, though going through many days in which I spaced out has diminished it’s effectivity somewhat. I intend to continue having my daily frogs for a while, and stopping for a week every time it fails 3 days or so to recharge. In particular the ability to choose whether to start with the highest value (female frog) or the most aversive (male frog) thing of the day is interesting because I feel motivated to wake up by the highest value and once awake I frequently decide to brute force through the aversive one first shortly after, basically cheating system 1. Here as precommitted is the list of the remainder frogs:

15 Male – Wake up every hour due to the possible events in Europe and US

Female – Get the proposal to a winning position.

16 Male – Call Deacon to make sure all is ready

Female – Go to flotation tank and beach in SF

17 Male – N/A (did not even create one)

Female – Ecstatic Dance 7th year anniversary

Here I noticed that Sundays have been just trouble for this system. I hereby decide unilaterally that I only have to eat a frog couple on the other days.

18 Male – Send a long email to S Garan.

Female – Considering all the options, decide what to do until August with life. (This ended up being increasing my writing output for Altruism related activities)

19 Male – Business lunch

Female – Try writing an article on altruism on the phone (that was Nash dominated by more important considerations)

Female – Obtaining all the academic EA hacks that I’ll be using through the PHD

28 Male – Start Writing an NSF grant?

Female – N/A

29 Male – Start Writing an NSF grant

Female – Finish fixing my online identity

30 Male – Be the second at one EA global event.

Female – Blog Post

31 – Sunday

Overall the hit rate seems high enough to be worth continuing to eat two frogs every morning.

41# Using a positive information diet for food has also been extremely useful. 3.5 of the 5 Kilos aimed to be lost have been lost, which assuming a logarithmic function seems to be on track to reaching or being very near the goal. It helped somewhat that two vegans moved into my house, increasing my probability of eating some types of non-caloric vegetables a substantial amount.

To use the passive voice to dodge from responsibility, “mistakes were made” however and I ended up buying a substantial amount of meat that was not within the constraint of fish and lean chicken. Soon the mistakes will have been corrected and it remains to be seen to what extend I’ll be able to stick to plan and whether the plan will cause the 5 kilo weight loss anticipated.

Which leads me to this month’s challenge.

# 40 One cold call a day keeps habit away

During this month I’ll make one phone call a day to someone I otherwise wouldn’t. This will include cold calling people, inviting people for conferences or to meet, ordering food (which may be the last comfort zone expansion frontier that my child self still clings on to). It will include calling someone whose phone I got online, and someone who I only know by reputation. It will include people who live in all continents.

So let’s get to it.

If you just arrived at diegocaleiro.com, take a look at the first challenge as it is the only one you have to go through to jump straight on to the current challenge. Do challenge yourself on the comment section, and every first of the month, I’ll start a challenge chosen by my readers, and ask how they are going at their own self-challenges. Every 15th, I’ll choose one for myself. If you want to give me a challenge, make a comment in the most recent post, which is where I’ll get them from every 1st of the month. To subscribe to diegocaleiro.com and keep track of your challenges, click on the blackish square on the bottom right that says follow. If you are logged in a wordpress account, check the top left instead. – Diego